


to tell how this will end

by batshape



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Quenya Names, Years of the Trees, and also elf drinking games, appearances of varying importance by fingon aegnor etc etc, cousin rivalry, in which everything about valinor-era galadriel screams 'i am the youngest child', taking extreme liberties with valarin grammar and the functionality of foresight, written for tolkien secret santa 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:14:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28280709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batshape/pseuds/batshape
Summary: “Your problem, Nerwen,” Írissë continues around a mouthful of preserves, “is that you do not tell tales. You deliver dissertations.”:Galadriel, her cousin, and youth. Three points in the past and two in the future.
Relationships: Aredhel & Galadriel | Artanis
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	to tell how this will end

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maskedlady](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maskedlady/gifts).



> written for tolkien secret santa 2020

She is enamored of her, slightly, in her youth. At so young an age there is little tangible difference between manifestations of jealousy and adoration, and for Artanis there is even less. Artanis is among the youngest of fifteen grandchildren, and she is not even afforded the novelty of being the last grandchild, nor only granddaughter, to distinguish her. Perhaps she can be distinguished by her youth—the youngest of four and second youngest of fifteen is certainly something, her father frequently reminds her—but this distinguishing characteristic is typically the impetus for much patronization and exclusion by her elder relations, for which Artanis cares not at all. 

Írissë is not that much older—half a year at most, though it is enough to count—and she is likeable in a way that Artanis, of gangly limbs and punctilious attitude, is not. Thus Artanis is both jealous and adoring of her elder cousin Írissë, unable and unwilling to parse one emotion from the other, and this goes not-unnoticed by her immediate family.

“I reckon next year, at Alqualondë, you will be old enough to dance the part of Enelyë,” proposes Findaráto, materializing rather obtrusively behind Artanis as she conducts her studies, and resting his chin and folded hands upon the crown of her head. “Won’t that be exciting?”

“Emmë dances Enelyë,” Artanis reminds him plainly, turning a page in her lesson book. “Emmë always dances Enelyë.”

“Well, yes,” Findaráto says, “but one day emmë may tire of dancing—” And this is defamation of the chiefest order, for Artanis cannot imagine her mother tiring of dancing; she has espied Eärwen and Arafinwë dancing alone in parlors and in dinner halls late at night when they think they are alone, and it does not seem to Artanis a thing of which one may ever  _ tire _ . “—and by then I reckon you will have grown into your limbs enough that you do not wobble like a new fawn every other step—”

Artanis scowls. “That is not my fault,” she mutters. Her brother hums.

“Certainly not,” he agrees. “Though I agree with Angaráto that it has perhaps factored into Nessa’s favoring of you, that you remind her of—”

_ “Ingoldo,”  _ Artanis protests sourly.

Her brother Findaráto laughs, charming as always. He straightens, then leans over Artanis’s shoulder and observes her work. “ _ Næxærra  _ doesn’t decline.”

“What? Why not?” demands Artanis. “If  _ Arōmēz  _ declines like a proper noun, I do not see why his  _ horse  _ should not—”

Findaráto shrugs. “Ask Oromë. I am not a suitable receptacle for grammar complaints, nor am I particularly skilled at Valarin.”

“Then I do not see why I should believe you when you say that Nahar does not decline—”

“I only say so,” interrupts Findaráto, clearly disinterested in the topic of noun declension. “I only say so, because I’ve heard from Turukáno that Írissë may dance Tatië at grandfather’s feast, and I would like to prepare you for that devastation some time before the actual event.”

Artanis feels her scowl deepen. She wedges the heel of her palm beneath her chin sullenly.

“That does not matter to me.”

Findaráto hums. Uninvited, though not unwelcome, he begins to braid Artanis’s hair. “Try that again,” he requests, “with conviction this time.”

“I have no problem with Írissë,” says Artanis, but she shoves her lesson book away from her to the center of the table and crosses her arms. “I do not.”

“It is no negative judgement of your own character if you do not like her,” says Findaráto wisely. “I have cousins whom I do not like.”

“No, you do not,” replies Artanis flatly, and her brother laughs.

“Well,” he muses, “I have cousins who do not like  _ me,  _ and cousins whom I wish would make the matter of their dislike less obvious than they already do.”

“And that is not the same thing at all,” decides Artanis. She sets her jaw. Repeats: “I have no problem with Írissë.”

Her brother secures one of her braids with a thick green ribbon, supplied perhaps from inside his own sleeve. He lays the rope of coiling gold against her left shoulder and sets to work on the other half of her scalp. “That is good, then,” says Findaráto. “She will dance it well, I think.”

“Of course she will,” Artanis says, unsure if she is affronted by the proposed possibility that Írissë will  _ not  _ perform the part of Tatië well, or if she is irritable at the continuation of this conversation. “I have no doubt.”

She knows from her brother’s silence that he is smiling, and she can bring herself to feel only marginal annoyance at this. Findaráto finishes her second braid and lays it against Artanis’s right shoulder, then leans over the table and pulls Artanis’s lesson book back to the space before her. “As you were,” he decrees, as if Artanis has any mind for Valarin noun declension now.

That Artanis will be disappointed—she finds  _ devastated _ a bit too of a sentimental word—at the witnessing of her cousin dancing the part of Tatië is a given. Artanis is not self-unaware; she knows she is competitive, and she knows that she is jealous, as much as she knows that she has good reasons to be both. Of course Artanis would have liked to dance Tatië in the place of her cousin—but Artanis is the youngest of fifteen, and there is little to be done about that for the time being.

And so Artanis wonders, rather, if she dislikes her cousin. She dreams up charts and diagrams and mathematical proofs, searches for archived evidence of ill thought in her journals, and does not reach a conclusion.

The thought occupies her for the remainder of the day.

:

By the time that Artanis reaches her majority, a select few of the elder grandsons of Finwë have thought it fit to bring more children into existence. This business is presumably conducted in an attempt to fill the void which an adult Artanis has left behind; in any case, Artanis spends family suppers seated across from a very small and unnervingly quiet child—her nephew, supposedly—and finds him less suitable a conversationalist than even a rival cousin.

“He is a terrible audience for tales,” says Artanis at one point to one such cousin. Írissë stirs honey into her cup and tilts her head in uninvested sympathy. “And there is no interest in his little head for any subject of science or song—honestly, I do not understand the appeal of children, if you cannot even hold a proper  _ conversation—” _

“I would think their inability to flee the scene would be desirable to you,” quips Írissë, and Artanis cuts her gaze at her. “Seeing as that provides a captive, if not riveted audience.”

“Not if the first mention of historiography puts him to sleep,” opposes Artanis, and Írissë purses her lips.

“That must please your brother,” she says. “I have heard from mine that putting a child to sleep is a coveted skill.”

“I refuse to believe that Turukáno finds it difficult to put any creature to sleep,” bites Artanis, and Írissë barks a laugh and points her spoon at her.

“Cute. I will tell him you said so.” She dips her silver teaspoon in the chokecherry dish and places the spoonful in her mouth. “Your problem, Nerwen,” she continues around a mouthful of preserves, “is that you do not tell tales. You deliver dissertations.”

“Untrue,” Artanis argues, and then feels the defense of a new and related dissertation gathering on her tongue. It is not Artanis’s fault that she has the demeanor of a too-eager historian, or a Valar-favored student: Artanis is both, and if she talks like her books occasionally, that is only a testament to the time she has spent poring over them. There are some—not Irmo, perhaps, for Artanis suspects the Lord of Dreams finds her more amusing than anything, even now—but there are some who would find excessive erudition in speech preferable to the inane narrative charm adopted by many of Artanis’s extended relations.

She scowls, and directs her attention to the propping open of a frosted-over window so that she will not prove her cousin right. “In any case. I don’t think I will have one.”

“A child?” Írissë dips her spoon again in the preserves and stirs a heaping portion into her tea (which is far too sweetened, by Artanis’s tastes). “Hm.”

Cold winter air steals across the table. Artanis nods firmly.

“I do not see the use. Additionally, they seem an expensive drain on my time.”

“Time which is better spent preparing dissertations,” agrees Írissë solemnly. She hums again, and avoids Artanis’s second cutting look. “Well, I do not think I will be married. It strikes me also as a waste of valuable time.”

It occurs absently to Artanis that this is a strange assumption to have: that they will not have all the time that they wish for to pass between Tirion and Alqualondë, that they might be presented with limits on their intellectual and social pursuits. It is a thought which, proposed aloud in her father’s house, would have made Arafinwë smile gently like Artanis had just said something embarrassingly unwise, and this makes her frown.

“This is very clever of us,” Artanis says instead—for she knows now that there is a difference between wisdom and cleverness—and again, Írissë laughs. She drinks her too-sweet tea and grimaces. Reaches across the table and pinches between her thumb and forefinger some sugar from the bowl, which she promptly also adds to the cup. “That must taste vile.”

“Hush.” Írissë wedges her bare heel against the third empty chair in her mother’s tea room, and Artanis thinks that if Eärwen had caught  _ her  _ doing such a thing, she would have been forbidden from the family library for the duration of a week, at least. But clearly, Anairë has raised her daughter differently. “Tell me my future.”

Artanis frowns. “That is not how it works,” she begins, but Írissë waves a dismissive hand.

“I don’t care,” she says. “Make something up, if you cannot glimpse anything.”

“What makes you think that your future would be so interesting, that I would foresee it?”

“I am a very interesting  _ nís,”  _ resolves Írissë, and angles her spoon at her cousin. “So tell me my future.”

Artanis narrows her eyes. She places her palms flat on the table, and looks her infuriating cousin in the face. “Nothing,” she says after an anticipatory pause, and Írissë snorts.

“Fraud,” she declares, and sips her tea. She must take note of the flash in Artanis’s eyes, for she smiles. “Perhaps I will just ask Findaráto.”

“It is a  _ gift _ ,” Artanis insists, “not a  _ parlor trick—” _

Írissë waves her chokecherry spoon. “I am teasing you, Artanis,” she condescends. Artanis scowls. “I mean nothing by it.”

Silence follows. Írissë looks at her cousin over the rim of her teacup. Artanis feels the slightest pang of embarrassment, that she could not have simply run parallel with the joke. She is admittedly still sensitive to personal critiques in her young adulthood, and has never been a complement to Írissë’s sense of humor.

The draft from the window increases. Artanis stands with the intention of closing the thing—silly as she feels for correcting so soon her own decision to open the window—and smooths the twist to her mouth. Snow has accumulated prodigiously between the propped frame and the sill in the time in which the window has been open: Artanis sweeps it away somewhat inelegantly with the whole of her forearm and blinks.

For a fraction of a moment—in the time between which Artanis first feels snow on her skin and the instant in which that snow begins to melt, sliding cold and wet down her wrist—for a fraction of that moment, Artanis believes she hears singing.

And this is not unusual: there is singing nearly always in Ñolofinwë’s house when Artanis is there to visit, and there is singing even more frequently in the house of Artanis’s father. The presence of new younger children has certainly compromised the quality of the verses to which Artanis sits audience now—her brother Aikanáro, with Artanis’s nephew tilting somewhat perilously from atop his shoulders, is coaxed quite willingly into simple children’s rhymes at nearly any hour of the day—but though the singing toward which Artanis presently tilts her head to listen may be simple, there is not a single characteristic of it which inspires cheer.

The words are an antique dialect of Telerin, and the genre is funerary. Though Artanis has never in her lifetime heard a death-mourning song intoned aloud in any ritual context (her knowledge of Cuiviénen music is informed purely by academic study and the personal records of her grandfathers), for that moment Artanis feels the song forming itself silently on her own lips.

Icewater reaches the inner swell of her palm, and Artanis blinks once more. When she turns, drafty window correction forgotten, the Telerin song also vanishes from her tongue. She cannot recall the words, in their original nor in translation, though Artanis thinks with conviction that the voice which had sung them had been Findaráto’s.

“Ah,” remarks Írissë, taking in her absent expression with an upwards quirk to her own mouth. “You have just foreseen a child in your future, haven’t you?”

Another blink. Artanis tilts her head.

“Not quite,” she says, and then she finds her own teaspoon to dip it in the dish of Írissë’s chokecherry preserves. Artanis places the red heaping spoon upside-down on her tongue and holds it there, then tries her hand at Írissë’s genre of jest. “I have just foreseen a husband in yours.”

“Well,” says Írissë, and takes up her teacup again. Her eyes are lit with brief surprise—perhaps, Artanis thinks, at the fact that her stiff little cousin has at last made a good joke—and then Írissë snorts a laugh. “Fuck.”

Artanis nods solemnly. The teaspoon is still in her mouth, laid upside-down against her tongue, and it rings twice against her teeth when she speaks. “Indeed.”

:

The Mingling has passed by the time someone proposes a game of rounds on the night of Írissë’s begetting celebration. Artanis has been anticipating the proposal—demands for drinking games tend to make their way around the table at this time of the evening, regardless of the occasion—and Artanis has until now only sipped sparingly from her wine.

Other relations have had less of the strategic forethought to do so. Findaráto is deeper in his cups than is wise, and Artanis has her doubts about her intoxicated brother’s ability to mark consistent time.

Nevertheless, when the cry goes up, Findaráto is drunk enough that there is not even a feigned humble opposition to the request. Instead, the table is cleared remarkably quickly, the few children who are yet too young to drink or to bear witness to the bawdier rounds once the game progresses are ushered to bed, and strings are tuned in the time it takes Artanis’s brothers and Ñolofinwëan cousins to arrange themselves in two parallel lines, with Findaráto standing atop the cleared table and providing ministrations from the high vantage point. Artanis attaches herself to Írissë, only in part because they are similarly tall—Írissë is quite good at rounds, and a demonstrably better hand at keeping down her wine than some of her other cousins.

Cups are passed about, one light and sturdy crystal piece for each pair, and each is filled slightly too high from the bottle of wine which also makes its way through the assembly. Artanis proffers the glass and Írissë fills it; Artanis’s eldest brother walks slowly down the centerline of the table and intones the rules.

The rules of a game of rounds are simple. Findaráto’s delivery of them is abbreviated: “Keep up with time. No spilling and no stumbling—and no hiding wine either. I will check cups if I think you are not drunk enough—” At this he levels his gaze with Artanis, who tilts her chin and smiles charmingly with all of her teeth. “And once you have been eliminated, I am putting you to work.”

“Tyrant!” condemns Aikanáro from the ranks, and Findaráto grins.

“There is no assumption that you will be capable of carrying a tune,” he continues loftily. “I expect most of you will be regulated to percussion.”

“Winner gives Írissë’s begetting day speech!” cries Findekáno cheerfully, and his sister looks indignant. Írissë had previously forbidden begetting day speeches; all attempts to deliver one by cousin or brother alike had been met with threatened bodily harm.

But Findaráto looks delighted. “High stakes!” he intones—definitively drunker than he should be—and then places the fiddle beneath his chin.

The allure of a game of rounds is largely its accelerated method for becoming hopelessly, irredeemably drunk in a short period of time. Like most Eldarin custom, it is accompanied by singing and dancing; unlike most Eldarin custom, it was devised by Findaráto Arafinwion to combat cold winter evenings and the boredom endemic to them.

Artanis has played many games of rounds, and lost every one of them. Írissë has played nearly as many, and currently enjoys a one to three ratio of games won to games played.

Írissë can hold her wine. And Artanis can devise her machinations.

They press together their palms, and Findaráto marks time, and then music of the round begins.

It is a fairly simple game, dreamt up by Findaráto and thus rewarding of boasting and showing off. The music begins at a reasonable pace each round, and to the less talented strategist this often appears a welcome opportunity to drain one’s cup before a quicker pace prevents the doing so. Artanis glimpses a few pairs aligning themselves with this tactic: Findekáno in particular appears to be of the mind that his current state of intoxication has preliminarily disqualified both him and Aikanáro from any hopes of victory. Singly, he has finished their cup.

“I have plans to win,” Artanis announces to Írissë as she spins her cousin in a tidy little circle, and Írissë plucks the glass from Artanis’s fingers and drinks deeply of its contents. She hums, passing the crystal back as she and Artanis switch their clasped hands and step counterclockwise now, and not a drop is spilled between them.

“Obviously,” Írissë intones, her eyes wine-bright but her gaze level. Artanis would prefer Írissë as a partner rather than an opponent in rounds on any occasion; Írissë is a quick and talented cheat, and though dissembly is certainly punishable by disqualification if it is egregious enough to be witnessed by the musician, it is not strictly against the rules. “I would not allow anyone else to deliver a begetting day speech, for they are the worst of orators unprepared.”

“You believe I am unprepared?” Artanis is offended. She lifts the cup to her lips—the tempo is accelerating now, meaning that she must also drink more quickly—and Írissë laughs, releasing her hand to clap once as dictated by Artanis’s brother, the drinking game tyrant.

“Of course not,” says Írissë, and again she tugs the cup from Artanis’s fingers and finishes the wine. Quickly, smoothly enough that it goes entirely unnoticed by their wine-soaked competitors, Írissë hooks her heel about the ankle of the nearest cousin for a fraction of a moment. The cup in Arakáno’s hand is unsteady; he spills three fingers-worth of its contents down his cream-colored sleeve and Írissë and Artanis are spinning away by the time he notices the seeping red at his elbow.

The round ends abruptly, with Findaráto lamenting that their clumsiness has abbreviated the best part of the verse. Arakáno and Amarië, the first pair to fall victim to Artanis and Írissë’s machinations, concede graciously to their better competitors—Amarië, at least, appearing to find no dishonor nor disappointment in being permitted to sit atop the table with Artanis’s brother and sing accompaniment. 

Privately, Írissë winks.  _ You are always prepared,  _ confides the gesture silently. The wine warms Artanis’s throat, and she grins. 

She and Írissë come terribly close to victory. Ultimately it is Artanis who cannot hold her wine, and she drops the cup entirely as her cousin dips her low enough for Artanis’s hair to sweep the marble floor. The crystal is sturdy, and the vessel bounces once before it meets its fracturing demise; red wine splatters up Írissë’s white dress and Artanis hisses a curse.

“Bad luck!” decries Findaráto, while Angaráto is raucously congratulated for his and Eldalótë’s victory with much improvised percussion upon the table. “But a valiant effort!”

Artanis does not compete for acknowledgement of her valiant efforts. Findaráto knows this.

So does Írissë. “Did you foresee that loss?” she inquires blandly, pulling Artanis upright again and tilting her head to investigate the stain on her skirts. She grimaces. “This is an ill-received begetting day gift, Nerwen.”

“I will make it up to you,” says Artanis, equally blandly, for this is one competition from which she can still emerge victorious. A show of carefully curated aloofness, a tinge of antipathy—Artanis has grown from an eagerly oppositional younger cousin into something which might beget the unease as well as the respect which a daughter of the Swan-maiden deserves. On occasions, of course, in which Artanis is not drunk enough to have spilled wine up her cousin’s silver-embroidered dress. “Perhaps it is a sign to incorporate more color into your wardrobe.”

Beside them, Angaráto and Eldalótë are abdicating their fairly-won right to Írissë’s begetting day speech. Írissë observes her cousin coolly, and then loses the silent competition in which Artanis has entered her. Írissë grins, widely, and to her grim horror Artanis is also coaxed into a smile, though the gesture on her behalf is small and a bit embarrassed.

“I suppose there must be something at which you are not a talent,” Írissë decides. “At least there is little diplomatic value to your brother’s drinking games.”

“Well!” Findaráto has been listening. “There is still time for that to be disproven, darling cousin.”

“I am not a betting  _ nís _ ,” replies Írissë gracefully, perhaps to avoid the dangerous topic of one particular political crisis in need of diplomacy, looming to the north. “I will take your word for it, Ingoldo.”

But when Artanis makes to join her brothers at the table, Írissë again pulls her close. Artanis is slightly drunk; she stumbles and begins a vague sound of protest, and Írissë silences her with a mischievous look.

“Tell me my future,” she implores quietly, gripping Artanis’s left wrist perhaps a bit too tightly. “To make the matter of the ruined dress up to me. I would know my future.”

Artanis does not know what to say. Artanis looks in her cousin’s face—there is something to Írissë’s expression that is somehow urgent, though Írissë herself is still warm and teasing and her gaze is still wine-bright—and foresees nothing of her future.

“I do not know,” says Artanis. “It—“

“It is not a parlor trick, I know.” Írissë releases her wrist, perhaps having realized the force with which she has been restraining her. She laughs. “Still. I had my hopes.”

“I—” There is a moment, a brief pang of discomfort, in which Artanis decides that she cannot leave her cousin dissatisfied, her future untold. “Good things,” Artanis says, and nods affirmatively. “Good things, certainly. A new dress among them.”

Írissë scoffs. Then Írissë grins. “Charlatan,” she condemns, and further: “Drunken sentimentalist.” 

And this is not particularly true—Artanis is drunk, perhaps, but she is far from sentimental—but she does not sputter indignantly. Artanis also grins, and tilts her head in a conceding bow.

(Years later, with a fire betwixt them and cold blue starlight illumining all around them, Írissë will demand it of her again.  _ Tell me my future.  _ Then Artanis will laugh, humorlessly, and her cousin will not smile.)

(“Fine, then,” Írissë will say. “Tell me the truth.”)

(Artanis will incline her head. There will be a third in their company: Turukáno and Elenwë’s young daughter Itarillë, tucked sleepily against the lower trim of Írissë’s hood. “To the best of my ability,” Artanis will say quietly, and it will be a hollow promise, for the question which Írissë will ask is  _ why do you follow us?  _ and Artanis will not be capable of providing her with an honest answer to it.)

(“I am not  _ following you,  _ cousin,” Artanis will say instead, quietly and with a perhaps immoderate amount of pride. Then Írissë will incline her head and they will lapse into a silence undoubtedly encouraged by the deep and hollowing cold which threatens to freeze even the insides of their mouths. Írissë will not ask the obvious question which remains.)

(Artanis will be grateful, for even then she will not quite know the answer.)

But for now, Írissë’s eldest brother proposes a toast. Findekáno is sober enough to stand, though he is drunk enough that the delivery of even a brief toast in his sister’s honor is difficult for both orator and audience; he is encouraged with much pounding on the table and heckling from Artanis’s elder brothers, while Artanis sits and politely declines the new glass of wine which she is offered. Írissë sits beside her, though she accepts the proffered cup and joins gleefully in the heckling.

Artanis never does tell Írissë her future. Perhaps—she will confide in herself many, many years later—perhaps this failure is permissible, for Artanis never once sees it.

**Author's Note:**

> In the Cuivienyarna, Enelyë and Tatië were married to the original elf fathers who woke at Cuivienen. Enelyë was the spouse of Enel, the leader of the clan which would become the Teleri, and Tatië was the spouse of Tata, from whose clan the Noldor were descended.
> 
> The Valarin grammar here is completely made up. I have no idea about the declension rules for proper nouns in the language, because as far as I can find, there's little actually written on Valarin in Tolkien's notes.
> 
> I think chokecherries are endemic to North America. Given that everything that grew elsewhere in Arda also grew in Valinor, and given that I think Aredhel would have liked them, they remain a feature.
> 
> you can find me on tumblr as batshape!


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